


A Lesson In Mutually Assured Destruction

by TheStudyInRed



Category: RWBY
Genre: Bottom James Ironwood, Exes, M/M, Post-Break Up, Top Arthur Watts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28102116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStudyInRed/pseuds/TheStudyInRed
Summary: James Ironwood and Arthur Watts are bitter exes. The fact that they would find their way back to each other is obvious, but how? Under what circumstances?And who would they have to bulldoze to get there again?
Relationships: James Ironwood & Arthur Watts, James Ironwood/Arthur Watts
Kudos: 10





	A Lesson In Mutually Assured Destruction

_“That is not danger,” said he. “It is inevitable destruction. You stand in the way not merely of an individual, but of a mighty organisation, the full extent of which you, with all your cleverness, have been unable to realise. You must stand clear, Mr. Holmes, or be trodden underfoot.”_

_The Reichenbach Falls_ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

_____________________________________________

They reorder themselves in silence. 

Arthur stands with favor to his left side as he pulls up his trousers and buckles his belt. His slender pianist’s fingers tremble. He watches James pant, hand pressed to his chest. The General’s head cranes over the back of the chair, still splayed open, still sweating, his clothes in tatters from Arthur’s nails. Their colognes mix in the tense air. 

Even as he tears his eyes from flushed, softening skin, he wonders if James missed him too. Or as much. Or with the same sentiment tightening his chest. 

Arthur knows, though, he is not yet strong enough to broach that conversation. His blackened eye aches. His fingers slow on his tie as he sorts out every crease from where James had gripped it. “So. You have a taste for it now.”  
  
A raspy huff. “This isn’t the first time we--” 

“Not what I meant.”  
  
“What, then?”

“Murder.” Arthur leans against the table with a pleasurable wave rushing up from his thighs. “I heard Sleet’s husband screaming from the cells.” 

James looks away from his gaze. His zipper doesn’t quite make it to the top, Arthur having broken some of the teeth on the way down. The soft voice that used to make him feel so safe now sounds hard and cold, like stainless steel. “Smooth deduction, but yes, I suppose I have.” 

Arthur detects a lie, fatter than most Atlesians live. He smiles and determines the purpling on his neck a lost cause to conceal. “Finally, you see we’re the same. Shame that boy and poor Sleet had to be your guinea pigs, but ah well, the result is well worth the reward.” 

James’ nose wrinkles. The dim light casts his face darker, the hollows under his cheeks deeper, the swell of his brows more prominent. “I’m beginning to think they didn’t search you well enough when I brought you in.” 

“I have no rings. I’ve never needed conventional means to read you, James.” Arthur fiddles with his cuffs, cracks his neck.

“You can pretend there’s something still here, but the fact of the matter is that you’re a criminal.” The General stands and smooths out his coat--or what’s left of it. His frown deepens. “We’re nothing alike.”

“Spare me. If Pietro Polendina committed my crimes for your side, you wouldn’t be throwing him in jail, you’d be putting a medal around his neck.” Arthur attempts to help him with the collar, but James bats his hands away. He squints up at him, almost chest to chest. “And if I delivered Tyrian to you, or Cinder better yet, what a tender world that’d be. To finally have Ozpin’s killer in your grip. To finally have your right-hand man’s killer in your grip. James, you know who and what I am, and that is not a fool. The things you’d do for a little power against her, the fear that rides you like death astride the back of war. You and I are the same, James.” 

“The only thing riding me at present is you.” James glares with desolate steel behind his eyes. “But don’t think of this as anything more than convenience.”

The ghosts of those hands tingles at Arthur’s hips as the General fixes his own collar, but the new prosthesis, the left hand, struggles with clumsy fingers at the fabric. The doctor’s lip curls. Subpar technology. You receive what you pay for.

When he reaches up again to help, he receives no protest. His voice teeters on a knife’s edge, trembles as the blade of grief digs with the weight of gravity alone. “Of course not. You wouldn’t know what to do with anything more, save scorning it and pretending I don’t exist while you sip martinis with the likes of Jacques Schnee.” He keeps his gaze on James as he unties the tie with a yank. “You don’t valiantly defend Atlas while playing nice with its high and mighty. You have lost parts of your body to defend this kingdom. No one knows that better than I. The truth is this: you’re a facade. You’re a hollow metal shell, filled with hatred of all the things that terrify you most. You want to trust others, but you can’t. The people below you are all you stand on and if they betray you, they’re _worse_ than dead to you. You use them to justify murder.”

James’ hand flashes out to seize Arthur’s face, thumb and forefinger squeezing his cheeks. “One day, it could be you.”

Arthur feeds the tie through James’ collar and draws it tight enough to make James gag. “One day, you might even enjoy it.”

“You’re a rat.” The General lets his fingers drag down Arthur’s face, down his throat. His voice rumbles in the doctor’s ears like a winter storm, “I cared about you, deeply, and despite your claims that you are at Salem’s side to sabotage her, my scroll is missing. As is a set of allen wrenches.”

Arthur’s stomach falls somewhere beneath his feet, his pulse beating against James’ touch. “James—”

“No, no,” He presses his metal finger to Arthur’s lips. “You said your piece. Here’s mine. Whatever your play is here, your game, I’m not here by choice. I can’t just recuse myself because you were my lover and no matter how many times you screw me over, my emotions won’t come off this, they’re like rust. I’m stretched thinner than paper. I cannot afford to waste time and I am running out of patience with you. I won’t insult you with an ‘if’, so rather when you break out of that cell, hope that I don’t find you. Hope that we don’t cross paths ever again. Because for a man who prizes his independence and his own intelligence above all else, you certainly enjoy being my prisoner.”

“Why would I steal your things if that’s true?” Arthur hums. “What a conundrum.”

“I’ll give you my theory. You enjoy being elusive. You’re a magician.” James watches the puzzlement grow on Arthur’s face with a light smile. “Show me the black queen and make me watch my allies disappear. Make me watch my soldiers turn up dead. You study me and then flick it back, but Arthur, I’ve been studying you too. You’re as condescending and cunning as ever, but no one knows you better than I do. You’ll wait until you’ve earned my trust, maybe entice me with everything under the nice coat, maybe even make me buy it for a little while, but I don’t let my guard down with you anymore. Not since Amity. I learned that lesson, finally. So as soon as we’re finished here, you’re going in a special room. Rubber, ceiling to floor. No electronics. All manual, like a vault. And I am going to throw you in there and leave you there until I need you.”

Arthur grips his shoulders, his brows together. “I am not doing this to spurn you, James. I’m doing this because I want that cold bitch dead as badly as you do. I want her head on a pike for what she’s done to me. What she’s done to you. What she’s done to this entire world.”

“If you keep feeding me that line of bullshit—”

Gloved hands seize the front of James’ coat and shake him. Arthur rarely shouts but this time it razes his throat dry, makes his eyes water. “It _isn’t bullshit_ , James. You have proof. I gave you everything I collected when you arrested me, you have my rings.”

“It isn’t enough.” James says flatly, blue eyes bright. “I’m going to need more than a few hunks of metal and your word to put my life in your hands a second time, Doctor.”

The General removes his hands from his coat and thrusts Arthur back against the desk. They both pant and glare at each other a moment. Arthur reels, smooths down his coat. He pushes his palms in his eyes until he sees stars, before running his fingers through his hair. The gel breaks and the strands hang in his eyes. “Fine. If you want more, I’ll give more. You’ve but to ask.”

When he looks up at James, the other man immediately folds his arms. As if his mere gaze is warrant enough to put up a barrier between them. Arthur sighs. “I can throw my affiliation to the wolves. Salem already knows I sabotage her, but she’s willing to let me live because I feed her. I can stop that. I can give you something of hers. Something you want.”

James sucks in a breath through his teeth, glances away. “What?”

“It’ll get me killed. I’ll never be free of her if you and your allies fail. She’ll make you watch.”

“If what you’re offering is big enough, that won’t matter. We’ll win.”

“You say that now.” Arthur whispers, before he straightens. “I can deliver you Tyrian Callows.”

James’ lips part. “How?”

“I’ll show you, but I need to tell you what you need to do after you end his life.”

“Tell me.”

Arthur closes the distance and raises on his toes to press a bruising kiss to James’ mouth. The reaction is delayed, a surprised mumble in the back of the General’s throat before he tugs the doctor in hard at the hips. Arthur pulls back with James’ lower lip in his teeth. He licks his own as he answers.

“Hope."


End file.
